Editing Community Kibin Helps You Proofread Your Writing Fast And For Free

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I am primarily writing about this startup because I need it desperately, and because it is the problem I would attempt to solve if I ever decided to flip the switch and become a startup founder instead of the personification of “those that cannot do write” or whatever. Unlike WordyHQ or earlier Web 1.0 professional editing services, Kibin is an editing community that allows you to upload a piece of writing and get it edited and proofread for free in a matter of 24 hours. You have no idea how much I want this to succeed.

Okay so you say that there’s no such thing as a free anything … Well the way Kibin works is that users can accumulate points for editing other people’s work, and use those points to get their own work edited. If you don’t have the time to edit other people’s work, or just suck at it (eh, hem) you can pay 50 cents for a Kibin credit (founder Travis Biziorek tells me that credits average out to one cent a word, so that a 1,000 word essay costs around $10 with the option to pay more if you need a faster turnaround) and use those credits to buy editing time. Biziorek says that edits usually get done in under 24 hours.

Even though the company is currently focused on students, if Biziorek can get the turnaround time down to under an hour, this will be a godsend for bloggers, who — I don’t have to tell you guys this — usually sacrifice grammar and punctuation for speed.

It is invaluable to have another pair of human eyes on your work — spellcheck can’t tell the difference between “complimentary” and “complementary,” for example. That kind of attention to detail is worth its weight in gold. I’m sure there at least 20-30 mistakes in this post even but I just don’t have the time to figure out which ones they are. Also, I am typo-blind. Anyways my point is there’s a market for this.

The 500 Startups-backed Kibin is currently 40K into its 400K seed round and has just over 3,500 users according to Biziorek, growing at 44% week over week (he ditched law school plans to work on it last April). Biziorek’s future plans for Kibin include encouraging its best editors to turn pro and start charging for their services as well building a custom API for services that mass-produced content. “We’re thinking, ‘How can we produce as many happy users as possible?’ Travis tells me.

Sweet Lord Jesus please let this succeed.

You can watch Kibin’s demo video and the rest of the 500 Startups’ Demo Day here.